In January, Li's Cheung Kong Infrastructure Holdings (CKI) made a similar investment in New Zealand when it snapped up diversified waste management company EnviroWaste for $501 million. (In addition to waste-to-energy, EnviroWaste also manages landfills.) At the time, Kam Hing Lam, CKI's managing director, praised the waste management industry as a solid source of growth because the "rate of increase in waste is fundamentally linked to growth in population, GDP and consumption."

Along with several other European countries, the Netherlands is at the forefront of the waste-to-energy business. Here's how it compares with the US:

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The waste-to-energy business is sure to grow. The European Union has set stringent targets for use of renewable energy by 2020. That also means trash reduction, which is why some cities leading the waste-to-energy charge have been importing trash to meet their thermal energy needs.

Many Northern European countries have so reduced their trash production that waste-to-energy plants need to import from other areas. Oslo residents produce so little usable trash that the city now imports garbage to fuel its thermal energy plants. The same goes for Sweden.

Often trash importers are willing to pay for outside waste. As we've discussed in the past, the US doesn't recycle very much of its trash; instead it sends it to China and other countries to do the recycling, which boosts its exports. China uses disposed plastic resin to produce its own plastics.